Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration May 12, 2014 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

FMCSA announces that it has received an application from McKee Foods Transportation, LLC (MFT) for an exemption from certain provisions of the Agency's hours-of-service (HOS) regulations. MFT proposes that its team drivers engaged in delivery and backhaul operations be granted an exemption from the HOS rules pertaining to use of a sleeper berth (SB). Current HOS rules require that all SB rest regimens include, in part, the regular use of a SB period for at least 8 hourscombined with a separate period of at least 2 hours, either in the SB, off-duty or some combination of bothto gain the equivalent of at least 10 consecutive hours off duty. MFT proposes that its team drivers be allowed to take the equivalent of 10 consecutive hours off duty by splitting SB time into two periods totaling 10 hours, provided neither of the two periods is less than 3 hours. FMCSA requests public comment on MFT's application for exemption.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) announces the availability of a new final report, ``Evaluating the Potential Safety Benefits of Electronic Hours-of-Service Recorders.'' The study quantitatively evaluated whether trucks equipped with Electronic Hours-of-Service Recorders (EHSRs) have a lower (or higher) crash and hours-of-service (HOS) violation rate than those without EHSRs. The safety benefits of EHSRs were quantitatively evaluated by comparing the crash risk for two exposure groups (i.e., EHSRs were considered to improve safety if the trucks with EHSRs showed a lower crash risk than trucks without EHSRs). For this project, EHSRs were defined as any device that electronically records drivers' HOS. The study is an effort to further quantify the safety benefits of electronic logging devices (ELDs) and provides results that are consistent with the Agency's estimates of safety benefits of an ELD mandate, as proposed on March 28, 2014. A copy of the report has been placed in the docket referenced at the beginning of this notice.